Fuse
by Senket
Summary: The drastic changes are not always the most obvious ones. Nick Cutter gets more than he bargained for, but perhaps it's for the better. Alternate Reality. N.Cutter/S.Hart


An uprooted plant, a broken egg, a dead velociraptor. A crushed butterfly. Who knew what it was that changed time, only that time changed. Nick Cutter felt that he should've been used to it, but aside from the disaster with his darling Miss Brown, the reprocutions had been insensibly slim, at least as far as he could see. It made him tense, jumpy, weary, and yet he was so busy looking for blaring errors that he tended to miss the slightest shifts in people's behavior. When Abby and Conner fought less, he atributed it to peaceful life at home- more, he assumed Connor had done something stupid once more.

When Jenny was smiling less it was because her home life was suffering due to work, when Lester's ties were becoming less tasteful and more garish then. ...Well, perhaps he had just run out of ties. Unfortunate things tended to happen to them, somehow.  
So, no, when Stephen's reactions towards him had stopped being rebellious and more defeated, he didn't know what to think. At the time he hadn't been willing to think too hard about it at all, stewing over things that had been true for eight years- and where in those eight years of searching and needing and grieving together did that bastard of a boy not think to mention that he'd slept with his goddamn wife? So, no, he hadn't looked so closely when Stephen had started avoiding looking at him levely, bruised bags beneath bloodshot eyes, shoulders slumped, and. Quiet. Uncharacteristically quiet, and sometimes he'd turn to see the taller man giving him such a look of naked pain that he was hardpressed not to feel the ghost of it pass through him and leave him a shaking messr.

Considering this, it rather unnerved him when, in the face of a rather hungry-looking Megistotherium, the man stared wide-eyed at it and fumbled with his gun until the very last second. He came away from it with a bloody lump in place of his shoulder, left arm limp and streaked with blood. Jenny drove in his place, a deathly chill falling over the team. Stephen and Nick where in the infirmiry room, the others looking across the glass at him, when the dread ran out and fury took his place.

"Can you please," he began in a frozen, controlled tamber, clenching his fist in his lap, "explain to me." He'd never been particularly good at controlling his temper, so it was no wonder when his voice got away with him, raising dramatically in volume and heat, "What the hell happened in there?!" Furious blue fixed on the Englishman.

Stephen did not move much. The muscle in his jaw worked, as did his hands- his complexion was paler than usual, making the red rim of his eyes, and the pale blue within them, stand out in sharp contrast. He crossed his arms, locked against his chest like a last defense, but Nick Cutter had always known how to wait his student out. "I haven't been sleeping," he answered finally, and it sounded torn from him, another deference that brought him to his knees, to the floor, down and down and down.

"What the hell do you mean, you haven't been sleeping? Who the hell's fault is that?!" He knew he was getting louder, meaner- he didn't care. It was hard to care. It was hard not to break things that were already cracking, not to push when things where already unsteady. He was not an especially patient man to begin with. "I almost died out there today!" Stephen's eyes were on him, then away again. He'd seen a flash of rebellion, but it had been smothered by helpless agony before he could catch his breath, and that angered him more. "Who next? Connor? Abby? Damnit!" His fingers grapsed the first thing they found- the gleaming edge of a stainless steel instrument tray- and he threw the object against the floor without a thought. "Get a bloodygrip, Hart!"

He couldn't breathe anymore, anger cloying his senses. He barely kept from knocking the cot over, storming out of the room. He caught sight of the man sinking to the floor out of the corner of his eye, Abby running to him, Connor's eyes dancing wildly from the one to the other. Jenny's mouth was hanging open, empty eyes staring vaguely at Stephen, or where Nick had been standing a minute ago, or just at the glass, shock and something unidentifiable on her face. He stormed into the locker room, worked his way past to the excercise equipment, punched and kicked and broke whatever he got his hands on until his knuckles and feet and elbows and knees were purple with bruising and-

He never saw the punch coming, pain blooming across his cheek as his head snapped to the side. Stunned, blinking white stars out of his vision, he turned to look at his attacker- Abby stared back with a terrible expression written across her normally stunning face, fury sparking from pale eyes- he almost missed the track of sticky tears on her cheeks. "What is your problem?!"

He stared at her reproachfully, mouth snapping open to answer, but she began again before he could. "You know what? I understand, yeah, that he slept with your wife eight years ago and, YEA, I understand that that pissed you royal. YES, I get it that it was a betrayal, and YEAH, he PROBABLY should've seen it fit to mention that little incident to you at some point in the five years where you grieved together and, yeah, maybe even more so in the three years when you were together. And SURE I guess I can see why you might think that's betrayal enough to break things off with him, because you live in the goddamn past all the time and you're a RIGHT GIT by the way, but how, HOW can you ever believe it's right to take a man that's broken and kick him again and again and again while he's down you son of a bitch?! You're just as bad as that- that WOMAN!" She punched him again before he knew what was going on, in the stomach, but weakly (shaking) and sank down onto the nearest bench, covering her face with her hands.

He tumbled backwards, disjointed, an odd buzzing in his head as her words repeated, rewound, sped, slowed, broke into a puzzle and reassembled. Pieces of his life, what if's and maybe's and almost's, never could have's, shouldn't have's, cracked and reallined. Days that had tred the borders of platonic where they had almost falled into too-close. That elusive feeling attached to the man's little-boy smile, to his giddy grins, affectionate sideways hugs, in a world where they had managed to materialize.

No memories from this world, but half-formed thoughts that had occured in his own and that he had dismissed as unlikely, impossible. That smile.

Those bloodshot eyes in a pale face, empty, quiet, walled up, wilting. Good God.

His eyes were blurry with tears when he looked up again at Abby. She was quiet and still now.

He was running before he knew what had happened, sliding around corners and barelling through people, shouting. "Stephen! Stephen!"

The younger man hadn't moved from the infirmiry floor, a pale expression of cold shock fixed on his face even as Jenny spoke to him softly, Connor floundering nearby. Nick stumbled to a stop in the doorway, panting, watching, feeling the pieces click into place- and even then, remembering with astounding clarity to words that had slipped from his (forked) tongue so thoughtlessly over the past few days, cruel and sharp without his knowledge. He moved into the room, falling to his knees and throwing his arms around Stephen (he looked so young, in that moment), fingers threading through his hair, words stuttered and disjointed even as he repeated himself over and over. "Oh God, oh Stephen, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so, I'm sorry, oh Stephen, Stephen, God I'm sorry." Helen had never mattered less than in that moment. He heard, felt, ever hitched breath from the body against him, every hyperventilating inhale, every soft whine, every shake, every soundless cry of fear, or need, or relief. Relief. His breath left his body when he felt (usually so strong) shaking hands touch his back, checking, seeing if this was real, press against his sides. A heave, and then arms wrapped around him, and Stephen's face pressing into the hollow of his shoulder, tears soaking into bloody bandages. It felt foreign, and yet the movement was obviously so familiar to the other man. Time. He needed time.

No. He didn't need time. Stephen needed time. To heal. And that was time he would give, and more. 'This doesn't have to be foreign,' he thought, and the future had never been his own so much as in that descision. 


End file.
